The US Deliberately Crashed A Predator Drone Into An Afghan Mountain

A group of Ohio-based air national guardsmen had to crash their
$3.8 million Predator drone into an Afghan mountain when they
lost control of the vehicle mid-flight in April.

The crash was blamed on "mechanical failure," says a recently
released official Air Force Report. Apparently, the crew
couldn't safely return the aircraft, and were ordered to destroy
the drone by ramming it into the ground.

Later, a recovery team was able to locate and sequester any
sensitive pieces of equipment, to include the drone's weaponry.

This is the 100th drone lost since 2007, according to a
leading drone tracking blog. Chris Cole, a leading drone
tracker, told the British Online Journal Defence
Management, that mechanical failure and engine failure were
the most common causes of drone crashes. But, Cole said that
"lost links" were next highest on the list of failures.

A lost link is when the data connection to the drone randomly
fails, kind of like a dropped call or briefly losing your web
connection.

"Lost links are likely to be a big problem if the predicted
opening up of civilian skies to UAV's actually happens," Cole
told Defence Management. "It may be that the cause of the
crash of the secret US Sentinel drone in Iran [in December 2011]
was due to a lost link," he added, "although the Iranian
government claimed that it spoofed the aircraft's GPS - which
also may be true."

Spoofing is when hackers successfully copy the code or
frequency used to control the drone. They then overload the
drone's system by bombing it with that frequency. Essentially,
the drone becomes confused, and hackers can 'convince,' for lack
of a better word, the drone that they are the true operators,
thus hijacking the controls.

Researchers say this is highly unlikely in the case of
military drones, which use encrypted signals and don't operate on
standard GPS.

Lost links, on the other hand, could become more common due
to civilian agencies, in particular news
agencies, starting to use their own drones, as the technology
becomes affordable. All those signals in the air and space could
interrupt signals to Coalition military drones, which fly in
restricted air space, Cole said.